Daily Mail profit down 76% on restructuring costs

LONDON--Daily Mail & General Trust PLC (DMGT.LN) reported Thursday a 76% fall in pretax profit for the first half of fiscal 2017, in line with its expectations, as it booked a number of costs relating to the company's restructuring.

The group, which owns a portfolio of businesses including the Daily Mail newspaper, made a pretax profit of 40.9 million pounds ($53 million) for the six months ended March 31, down from GBP171.5 million for the comparable period last year, on revenue that rose 5.1% to GBP794.3 million.

The group has declared an interim dividend of 6.9 pence a share, up from an interim dividend of 6.7 pence a share in fiscal 2016.

Daily Mail said it expects revenue for the year to meet expectations.

"In the second half of the year, although we expect challenging market conditions to persist for some of our businesses, we will continue to focus on improving operational execution and completing our strategic portfolio review during this period of transition," Chief Executive Paul Zwillenberg said.

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